Personalia

Revered President Maharaj will visit Bamunmura from 5 to 12 May, and Narendrapur from 31 May to 10 June. He is in good health.

Swami Vagishananda ji will be visiting Krishnanagar in West Bengal from 21 to 27 May. He is keeping well.

Swami Gautamananda ji has almost recovered from his recent hip fracture. He is scheduled to visit Thiruvananthapuram from 6 to 10 May. He is keeping well.

Swami Prabhananda ji will visit Agartala from 12 to 26 May. He is keeping well.

Swami Shivamayananda ji is scheduled to visit Vadodara and Rajkot from 8 to 17 May, Nimpith in West Bengal from 24 to 28 May, and Kankhal from 30 May to 4 June. He is keeping well.

Swami Suhitananda ji will return to Belur Math on 14 May after visiting Jalpaiguri, Siliguri and Darjeeling. Subsequently, he will visit Kamarpukur and Jayrambati from 17 to 28 May. He is in good health.

Headquarters

We are glad to announce that the ancestral house of Swami Trigunatitanandaji Maharaj in Kolkata was recently acquired by us. After the restoration work, the house has been named Ramakrishna Math Swami Trigunatitananda Memorial, and it was inaugurated by Swami Vagishanandaji on 17 April. RKMVERI (our deemed university) will be conducting classes and other activities at the memorial.

Commemoration of the 125th Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s Chicago Addresses

The following centres held programmes mentioned against their names:

Antpur: A public meeting on 15 April attended by 350 devotees.

Gadadhar Ashrama, Kolkata: A lecture programme at a school in Hooghly district on 10 April which was attended by about 200 students and teachers.

Kankurgachhi: A spiritual retreat on 28 April which was attended by 446 devotees.

Mangaluru: Lecture programmes in 10 colleges in April which were attended by 2150 youths in all.

Nagpur: A special lecture on 13 March attended by a good number of devotees.

News of Branch Centres (in India)

The renovated Fatteh Billass palace at Khetri centre, where Swami Vivekananda had stayed as a guest of Raja Ajit Singh in 1891 and 1893, was inaugurated by the General Secretary on 31 March. The palace now houses the Ajit-Vivek Museum, which was also dedicated by him on the same day. Public meetings and cultural events were held on 30 and 31 March as part of the inaugurations and also to mark the diamond jubilee of Khetri centre. About 50 monks and 400 devotees and well‑wishers attended the two-day programme.

Revered President Maharaj visited Baranagar Math on 28 April and laid the foundation stone for the proposed dispensary-and-non-formal-school building at the centre’s nearby campus on Ratan Babu Road. Vice-President Swami Vagishanandaji, the General Secretary and about 300 monks and 3000 devotees attended the programme.

Summer camp at Kochi

The following centres held summer camps for students. The programmes included chanting, bhajans, yogasanas, values education classes, etc.

An associate professor in the physics department of RKMVERI (deemed university), Belur, has been appointed a Regular Associate of the prestigious International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, for a period of six years. This will entitle him to a few fully sponsored academic visits to ICTP.

Four of our degree colleges have secured good positions in the ranking list for the year 2019 announced by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, on 8 April. The colleges and their rankings are as follows:

Five students of Deoghar Vidyapith won the prestigious Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY) Fellowship 2018.

Aurangabad centre held a medical camp from 26 to 28 March at Paithan, the birthplace of the Sant Eknath in Aurangabad district, on the occasion of Nath Shashthi Mela. In all, 4047 patients were treated in the medical camp.

Swachchha Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign)

Kamarpukur centre conducted a cleanliness drive at Kamarpukur village on 28 April.

Mangaluru Ashrama conducted the following activities in April: (i) four cleanliness drives in Mangaluru involving 1550 volunteers, and (ii) awareness campaigns for 25 days in which volunteers reached out to 1360 households in different parts of Mangaluru city, spreading awareness about waste management.

Values Education and Youth Programmes

Bagda

Bagda Math held 14 values education programmes in 13 schools of Purulia district from 7 February to 29 March. In all, about 2700 students and 100 teachers attended these programmes.

Delhi centre conducted 26 values education workshops in 12 cities spread all over the country between 3 and 26 April which were attended by a total of 1745 teachers and 93 principals.

Rajkot Ashrama held (i) three values education programmes on 16, 18 and 20 April, attended by about 195 students, and (ii) a programme on human excellence on 17 April, attended by 56 bank professionals.

News of Branch Centres (Outside India)

Dhaka (Bangladesh) centre conducted a medical camp at Langalbandh in Narayanganj district on 12 April on the occasion of Ashtami Snana, an annual bathing festival, at Brahmaputra River; 76 patients were treated and given free medicines in the camp.

Obituary

We record with sorrow the passing away of Swami Satyatmakananda (Bhanuswarup), aged 41, under tragic circumstances. He was found dead in his room in the Punkunnam city-centre of Thrissur Math on the afternoon of 13 April. An initiated disciple of Swami Ranganathanandaji Maharaj, he joined the order at Belagavi centre in 2009 and received sannyasa diksha from Swami Smarananandaji Maharaj in 2018. He served at Belagavi, Aalo and Thrissur centres. Reticent by nature, he used to spend long hours in japa, meditation and studies.